Hedge fund management firm One River Asset Management has filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund with a green spin.
It is seeking to offset Bitcoin's carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits that will equal the estimated CO2 emissions linked to the trust, a first for any proposed trust that offers direct exposure to Bitcoin.
According to the prospectus, One River will buy Ethereum-based MCO2 crypto tokens from environmental platform MOSS.Earth. Each token represents one ton of reduced CO2 emission:
Tokenized carbon credits are fungible and do not represent a claim on a specific underlying carbon credit issued to a specific carbon reduction project. The Trust will initially acquire MCO2 tokens from Moss from time to time at pre-negotiated prices in an amount sufficient to offset the estimated carbon footprint of the bitcoins held in the Trust's portfolio, with a view towards tracking the performance of the Index.
If approved, the shares of the ETF will trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
One River Digital, the hedge fund's crypto arm, is heavily invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The U.S. SEC is yet to greenlight a single ETF proposal, with multiple giants of the likes of Fidelity and VanEck vying to be the first to launch the much-anticipated product.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team